Disney CFO Says Ads Are Coming To ESPN Streams To Apple Devices

Video programmers have been eagerly waiting for technicians to figure out how to present their ads to millions of iPad and iPhone users. And they’ve finally done it. “In the near future, by the end of this month, you will see advertising even on the iOS platform,” Disney CFO Jay Rasulo said today at the Goldman Sachs Annual Communicopia Conference. Indeed, ads are already up on streams of ESPNU. That will be followed by ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3. “We have already had advertising in the desktop and PC (and) on the Android phones,” Rasulo says. “Now we will have it on the iOS platform as well.” That will result in “the monetization that we always envisioned.” There’s still an open question about when Nielsen will be able to count mobile viewers, a key to determining how much advertisers should pay. Rasulo says he expects that to be resolved “in the near future.”